Lorenzo Romar says Tony Wroten Jr. may return next week

Tony Wroten Jr.’s arthroscopic surgery on his right knee Thursday isn’t considered serious and coach Lorenzo Romar said this morning he wouldn’t be surprised if the freshman guard returned to practice next week.
In an interview with KRJ-AM host Mitch Levy, Romar wasn’t worried about Wroten’s long-term health. However, he had concerns about UW’s seven freshmen learning the team’s defense and admitted he’s had to slow down how much he teaches them the system.
After six days and seven practices, the Huskies are behind previous Romar-led teams at this point in preseason drills.
Romar also touched on the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll that was released this week. Three Pac-12 teams are ranked. The Huskies received votes, but fell outside the top 25.
Here’s a transcript of Romar’s interview.

(Make us all feel that everything is going to be OK.) “It is. When you talk about minor, I would say minor minor surgery. It was nothing huge at all. In fact, I’d be surprise if he wasn’t on the floor doing drills with us next week. He’ll be right back out there. I likened him to (Chris Polk) although the surgery that Chris Polk had is more serious than Tony’s surgery. Chris Polk didn’t miss a beat and Tony will be back even sooner than I would think.”(Is it the same knee that he injured two years ago?) “Yeah but it has nothing to do with his cartilage or his ligament. All of those are fine and strong.”(What led to the surgery?) “Just discomfort and soreness and sometimes when you have had surgeries some scar tissue can build in there and sometimes that can hinder your mobility and you just remove that and everything is fine. So that’s what will be the case.”(Could he have had the surgery sooner?) “Probably. It’s something … the flip side of this is he probably could have played all year without having it. So it’s again it’s something that let’s do it now and he won’t miss a beat.”(Will he play in the first game?) “We’re hoping that’s when he’ll be able to come back hopefully.”(Does this change the starting lineups and rotations?) “We hadn’t settled on a lineup anyway so all of that is still up in the air. It absolutely changes zero. … There’s no reason for alarm whatsoever.”(What has practice been like?) “When you first see us you’ll see that we’re much longer. Not compromising our athleticism, we’re much longer. From a coaching perspective (there’s) a lot more teaching because there’s seven freshman. So half of our team are learning things for the first time. So we’ve had to slow down the pace in our practices in terms of teaching, not our pace in terms of whether we’re uptempo or not. We’ve just had to introduce some things a little later than we had in the past.”(Does that mean the freshmen are picking things up slowly on the defensive end?) “I’d say its 75-25. Seventy-five percent defense and 25 percent offense. How to feed the post. Little things like that. How to set a man up coming off a screen. Things of that nature. But 75 percent of it is more on the defensive side. Where to be? The intensity of it. The focus you have to have. In our defense – not just every possession – but ever pass you’ve got to move quickly to the right spot on every pass. And it’s taken us awhile to get to that point where it’s like clockwork. It’s very interesting if you come to our practice and you see the returners go out and do some type of drill and it’s easy for them and you see a huge gap with the freshmen. But in a week, that gap is beginning to close so we’re making progress.”(Does it mean anything that Washington is not ranked in the top 25?) “It means we’re not in the top 25. That’s what it means. Understand that if we were in the top five that’s what it would mean to. If we were in the top five in the rankings that’s all it means.”